The lack of writing meant a lack of books at the Academy. Cleo knew of a dozen volumes that dove into the lineages and powers of gods from all over the world, but they were all secured in the Great Library in Alexandria. It would take months for a letter to reach the Library and for books to be copied and sent back. Cleo was in a foul mood for half a day and ranted about the druidic rules just as she had when classes had started. Except with more anger, and cursing in at least five languages. In the end there was nothing else to do but visit the Temple of All Gods. Besides the shrines, the Temple housed some texts about the gods.


    Maddie was still apprehensive about going to the Temple, in case Tereus -- or Ares -- was waiting for her. Corentin assured her that the man would not show up while they were with a teacher. Maddie was calmed not at all, until Cleo suggested they invite Magister Serverus. A group of five would surely be a strong deterrent, she reasoned. With just a little coaxing she eased Maddie’s fear.


    The statue was still in two pieces in the middle of the rotunda. Apparently the workers had been stumped and simply left it alone. It was a stark reminder of Maddie’s parentage, of the fight between her mother and Ares, of her time with Tereus, of the fear that seemed to always exist beyond the surface of her thoughts. When Maddie stopped moving, Cleo took her arm and gently led her forward.


    “Would you like to stop by the shrine?” Cleo asked. Maddie shook her head.


    “I’d rather look at the books first,” she said softly. Serverus walked past all the shrines and knocked on an unobtrusive door. He spoke to the attendant who opened it and then motioned for the rest of them to walk over. Cleo stopped just inside the room and took a long breath, inhaling the smell of books. Gaius had to poke her in the back to bring her out of her reverie.


    “Why have I never visited here before?”


    “Off-limits to students, I’m afraid,” Corentin said as he walked past her. Cleo’s face fell a bit, but she took another sniff and a smile formed.


    Serverus was talking with the attendant in the corner, telling him about their mission. Corentin went over and the three talked quietly while the students looked around. The room was only about the size of Maddie’s bedroom, but the ceiling went up to the height of the rotunda. Gaius sent a ball of light up and it revealed that the shelves on the upper levels were empty. Cleo scoffed but quickly got distracted by the books the room did have.


    While it might only be half full, the library was enormous and stuffed with books, scrolls, and any other kind of writing possible. Cleo was sure she caught a glimpse of a clay tablet, but it was stuck in a corner. It was okay, she reasoned, since she couldn’t read cuneiform anyway.


    The library was not organized, at least in now way that Cleo could see. The young attendant rushed around as much as the space allowed and tried to find the information. He told Cleo that there was a very complex organization system set up by the Head Librarian -- an old man sitting next to the door. Cleo was doubtful, but she asked for volumes on a few subjects and the librarian was able to produce them. He handed Cleo a book of bound papyrus. She opened it and took a deep whiff. “I’ve missed you.” she murmured. Gaius gave her a sidelong look but didn’t say anything.


    “Books about the gods” turned out to be a very broad request. As it was primarily a religious library, most of the books were about the gods. Corentin stood in a specific spot, blocking a tower of shelves. Cleo caught the title of one of the books and it seemed to be about magic. Her hands literally itched to touch those books even for a second, but she regained her focus.


    After taking a while to get used to the library’s selection and focus on their issues, Cleo narrowed down their focus.


    “Ares, Mars -- the differences between them, Brigantia, other British gods, life gods, death gods. Gods with wings and big swords. Demigods.”


    “Brigantia will be hard to find information on,” Corentin said, “As druids tend to be the keepers of information about the gods, there isn’t much written down.”


    Cleo let out the longest suffering sigh that any of them had ever heard. It blew dust off a book halfway across the room and set Gaius coughing.


    “Then why didn’t you say anything?”


    Corentin held up his hands and shrugged. “Brigantia isn’t a very popular goddess. To be honest, I’m surprised she has a shrine here.”


    “There was a diaspora or Brigantes a couple of decades ago,” the young librarian said, “they insisted. It’s why she’s on the end.”


    “Then we need to know more about the Brigantes. Maddie, what do you know about your culture?”


    Maddie looked down at the floor, ashamed. “Not much. My father didn’t talk much about where we came from. He’s not even British, he’s Breton. He said my mother came from the north, but other than my name, she didn’t leave anything and he didn’t talk much about her. I don’t remember her at all -- from when I was a baby, at least -- so she was never there to tell me stories or about her family.”


    There was a sudden sad energy that came from both Maddie and outside the room.


    Cleo gave her friend a side embrace and patted her shoulder.


    “Maybe we’ll be able to fill in some of those details,” she said.


    “I doubt it. The librarian said there isn’t much they know about Brigan…my mother.”


    Her eyes widened as she suddenly remembered something Tereus had said.


    Tereus said that Brigantia had been other gods. Gods of death…and life. That’s what we need to look up. And any demigods descended from them.”


    Cleo looked at Gaius. “Any ideas?”


    “Um…Ankou, Arawn, Pluto. But they''re all very different. I wouldn’t even know where to start in creating a list of commonalities.”


    “Well, Ankou is a psychopomp, right?” Maddie and Gaius both gave her blank looks.


    “He brings the dead to whatever place they end up. Like Charon.” Understanding dawned in her friends’ eyes.


    Cleo, ever the pragmatist, shook her head slightly and refocused. "Well, if we can''t find information on Brigantia directly, we''ll have to go sideways. Let''s start with death gods. We know she has a connection to them, according to Tereus."


    The young librarian, who''d been hovering nearby, perked up. "Death gods? We have a lot of information on those. Many cultures have their own deities related to the afterlife." He gestured toward a far corner of the room, where shelves were crammed with scrolls and bound volumes.


    As they made their way through the labyrinthine shelves, Cleo''s eyes lit up at the sheer volume of information. Gaius, ever curious, picked up a scroll covered in hieroglyphs, while Maddie remained quiet, her gaze fixed on the floor.


    "Here," Cleo said, pulling a thick tome from a shelf. "This is a comparative study of underworld deities. It might give us some clues."


    They gathered around a large table, the book spread open before them. Pages filled with illustrations of skeletal figures, shadowy beings, and winged guardians turned under Cleo''s eager fingers.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    "Look," she pointed to a passage. "Many death gods are associated with cycles of rebirth, not just endings. Maybe Brigantia''s connection isn''t about destruction, but transformation."


    "That fits with what Tereus said," Maddie murmured. "Two sides of the same coin."


    Gaius arrived at the table after Maddie, Cleo, Corentin, Serverus, and the attendant. Rather than crane to see over them, he went back to idly sorting through the scrolls with the hieroglyphs. Suddenly, his eyes widened.


    “Cleo, remember what you said about goddesses with wings and big swords?” He held up the paper to the group.


    “I was just joking, Gaius. That’s not really a type of goddess.”


    “No. Look,” he said, shaking the paper to get her attention. She looked over, then turned back to the book.


    “That’s just a picture of Isis. You could call her a death goddess, and she does have wings and a sword, but she’s an Egyptian god.”


    Gaius and Maddie both looked puzzled.


    “So?” Maddie asked quietly.


    “Egyptian gods don’t have physical forms. They can’t make babies with humans. You don''t think I already considered her and rejected her? She doesn’t have any children. Human children, at least. It’s a dead end.”


    Gaius hmphed. “I still think it’s related.”


    Cleo shrugged. “You’re welcome to be wrong if that’s what you want.”


    Gaius scowled but kept his mouth shut.


    “What about storm gods?” Maddie asked, “Are there gods of death and storms?”


    Cleo flipped through the book, cataloguing all the information.


    “As far as I can tell there are storm gods and death gods but not both.”


    “What about fertility gods?” Gaius shouted from down the stacks. The young librarian hurried over to him and picked a bound volume from the shelf right above him. He hesitated, not sure if he should hand it to Gaius or bring it back to the table. Gaius shooed him away and the youth hurried to the table.


    “Fertility gods,” he announced.


    Cleo paged through the book. Looking at the descriptions of different deities.


    “Rain brings fertility. It waters the crops.” She looked up at the others. “I don’t know, it’s kind of thin.”


    “But, there are gods of life and storms?” Maddie asked.


    “There are, but there’s not really anything there. It looks like it’s ‘god makes storms and brings fertility.’ That’s it.”


    Maddie sighed softly and looked down at the table. “Oh.”


    “It’s okay. What’s our next avenue of attack?


    “Demigods,” Maddie said forcefully. Cleo’s eyes widened at her vehemence. She turned to the attendant.


    “Let’s look up demigods.”.


    Hours passed and frustration built as high as the piles of books and scrolls around the table.


    “Every god of life or death has no children, and there are so many of them,” Gaius groused. “All of the demigods we know about are thousands of years old. Tereus said there are thousands of them living today.”


    “Hundreds of thousands,” Maddie corrected quietly.


    “Right. I know the gods like having sex, but there aren’t even a hundred demigods that we’ve come across in these books.”


    “Well, it makes sense that only the famous ones get into the myths,” Gaius said, wandering down one of the two cramped corridors. He hadn’t stayed still for very long, mostly browsing the stacks and picking through the scrolls. The library assistant would dart out from time to time to put things back the way they were supposed to be.


    “Hey, remember what I said about Tereus having a divine ability?”


    “Mhm,” was all the response Cleo gave, her nose firmly entrenched in another book. Her deep breaths and quick-moving eyes seemed to be in contrast to each other.


    “Well, there’s a book on Ares sitting right here on this shelf. Maybe instead of searching fruitlessly for hours -- like we’ve been doing -- we should focus on Ares instead. Know thine enemy and all that.”


    Cleo’s head shot out of the book and she looked cat Gaius, or at least in his direction.


    “No offense, Cleo, but this is a dead end.”


    Maddie, a little book-drunk after all this time, snorted at the unintentional pun. Cleo glanced at her and shook her head softly.


    “Okay, what you say makes sense. Bring it over here.” She made room on the table for another book.


    Cleo scanned the book, turning pages almost before Maddie could read a single sentence.


    “Maddie, what kind of magic did Tereus use?”


    “Um, mostly illusion magic. Why?”


    “Well, this book has a different take on Ares. It goes into his behavior among the gods, not mortals. And he likes to trick the gods into fighting each other.”


    “Hermes is the trickster god, though, isn’t he?” Maddie offered up.


    “Yes, but tricky among mortals. Ares likes to make everyone fight, but especially his family, it seems.”


    The young assistant, who had been hovering around the periphery this whole time, suddenly spoke up.


    “Wait, that sounds familiar,” he said as he went to grab a book. “Our friends from the North have a similar god. He’s known for his pranks, but I think he likes to cause strife between the other gods.”


    He plopped a heavy book down right over the middle of the open book about Ares. Cleo’s jaw fell and she turned pale. Maddie thought she might have heard a short whimper escape her friend’s mouth. The assistant librarian stared at her for a moment, then realized what he had done. He grabbed the book and lifted it up while Cleo scrabbled under it for the smaller volume.


    She pulled the small book out with both hands and held it up to her face, examining it closely for damage. She sighed when there didn’t seem to be any. The assistant looked to be near tears, no doubt thinking about the punishment he would receive. Cleo tried to hand her the open book but he waved his hands at her in a “no, no, no” gesture. The sound of a throat clearing came from the seat by the door where the Head Librarian sat. The assistant took the book reverently from the girl’s hands with both his own and carried it slowly to his master. Maddie and Gaius glanced at each other. The whole thing had looked like some kind of ceremony.


    Cleo took a minute to get her breathing under control, then gingerly opened the cover of the new volume. She turned a few pages. Then she sighed.


    “I can’t read this. It’s in a language I don’t know.”


    Gaius’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “You mean a language exists that you don’t know?”


    Cleo glared at him. “Funny,” she said, deadpan.


    She turned her glare on Maddie as the girl let out a chuckle. Then she smiled.


    The aide hurried back and went to the book. He turned to a section in the middle of the book with an illustration that depicted a tall man with fiery red hair.


    “This is Loki. He’s adopted by the…father? leader?...of the German gods and loves to make them fight each other. The German gods don’t mess with humans as much.”


    He traced down some lines, his mouth moving silently as he translated the text. Then he turned the page. A picture of a man fighting a wolf as large as a ship was above an illustration of the world on fire.


    “Oh, and Loki starts the war that ends the world.”


    Maddie’s eyes widened. The attendant had said it so casually, but she could see that happening as a result of Tereus’s plan.


    “How was Loki defeated?” she asked quietly.


    “Uh, let’s see. Bound to a rock with the entrails of his own son.” Maddie made a disgusted face.


    “Oh, wait, that’s before the end of the world.”


    Maddie paled.


    Cleo picked up on Maddie’s thoughts. “We really don’t know that’s Tereus’s plan,” she reassured her friend, “What he said totally makes sense for him.”


    “But not for this Loki,” Maddie countered.


    Gaius sighed as he walked back to the table. “It doesn’t matter what Tereus or Ares want. We have to stop them anyway.”


    Maddie and Cleo slumped in their respective chairs.


    “Did this even get us anywhere?” Maddie groused.


    “It got us to a library,” Cleo offered helpfully, “And knowledge is its own reward.”


    Maddie and Gaius both rolled their eyes at her.